Empathy is an understanding of what other people feel. Both stories influenced my perspectives on empathy. The nightingale sacrificed its life to help a young man to make his beloved happy. The attempt of the nightingale can be considered as empathy. On the other hand, the hunger artist sacrificed his life for his art. This essay will show how both stories changed my perspective on the definition of empathy.
I do not empathize with the hunger artist because his decision to starve was not worthwhile. He sacrificed food because he wanted to attain the pleasure of popularity by avoiding all materialistic things, including food. The hunger artist thought that by sacrificing food, he could achieve fame. He also believed that such greatness could help him give his complete devotion to his art. However, popularity is not attained by starving himself completely. Food, after all, is not a materialistic article; it is the fundamental need of a living being to survive. Thus, the artist killed himself willingly, and for no good reasons, which is considered as suicide. He wanted to achieve great fame to reach the pinnacle of success by improving his skills of starvation. Thus, he was fasting for no one and selfish reasons. Also, we cannot forget his last word stating that he was fasting because he could not find a food that he enjoyed. He could have appreciated that he has access to food. Some countries even do not have a bite of bread, and some do not have access to healthy water.
Muslim people fast in the month of Ramadan because they want to show empathy for those who do not have healthy food to eat. They pray to Allah to provide food to those homeless and poor people. Moreover, fasting in Ramadan also shows gratitude to Allah for providing us the needs to survive. Fasting in Ramadan is very different from the fast of the hunger artist. He completely avoids the food. However, Muslim people in Ramadan eat after sunrise or in the absence of the sun. Islam mandates the consumption of food because it is essential for the survival of living beings. Hence, from the perspective of Islam, the decision of the hunger artist to be starved is unethical. Islam restricts a person from killing himself knowingly. Therefore, the hunger artist was not fasting for any reasonable cause.
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I empathize the most with the nightingale because it sacrificed its own life for the pure love of the main character (the student) in the story. It made countless efforts for searching the red rose for the man’s beloved. It wondered place to place and asked all trees of roses to give it a red rose. The nightingale flew everywhere in extreme weather in search of the red rose. It did not find any red rose. Hence, eventually, it shed the blood from its heart to turn a white rose into the red. Its efforts were selfless. Thus, I have more empathy for the nightingale in comparison to the characters of both stories, such as the girl, the student, and the artist.
I do not have empathy for the other characters in the story “The Nightingale and the Rose” because the nightingale is a bird; it could not think for the fulfillment of its selfish motives. Despite being a bird, it understood the feeling of others. It valued the pure love of the man and sacrificed its life. Nevertheless, I have a little empathy for the hunger artist in comparison to the nightingale because nobody was able to understand the reason for his anxiety. People stop cheering him while making many sacrifices in his life. Moreover, he lost all his hope and became sad and lonely. I understand that his sadness led him to find a way to get the fame back, by simply killing himself softly with fasting.
Both stories are related to each other as they have been written in a manner, which seeks attention to the pain and sorrow of the nightingale and the hunger artist. The illustration of the pain and sadness of these characters played a crucial role in making others feel their pain and sorrow, which develops a sense of empathy in the readers of the stories. Thus, the stories highlight sacrifices as the foundation of empathy. The two stories emphasize sacrifice, but in different ways, the story “The Nightingale and the Rose” describes the sacrifice of the nightingale for some other person, and the “The Hunger Artist” story describes the sacrifice of the hunger artist for his motives. The understanding of the stories has revealed that empathy develops in a person when understanding the feelings of others. The sacrifice is one of the most significant factors, which produces a sense of compassion in individuals. People empathize more with people when they sacrifice something for others.
